


The Man, Trapped

by beetle



Category: Doom (2005), Star Trek
Genre: F/M, Post-Olduvai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:18:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written to the song prompt: ten random songs, and the duration of each song to write ten ficlets. However I played some of these songs twice. GENDERSWAPPED CHEKOV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man, Trapped

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Warnings: Set in the ST:XI 'verse, with two major characters from "Doom." GENDERSWAP. UNDERAGE. Dark-ish.

R.E.M.: Me In Honey

  
  
The first time Leonard gently thrusts his way inside her, Polina Chekova nearly cries.  
  
  
Not from the pain—though there is that; it’s her First Time—but because she’s been waiting for this moment her whole life, it feels like.  
  
  
“I love you,” she says as he pulls out slowly and thrusts again, just as gently, going in a little deeper. His closed eyes open, lashes framing dark, unfathomable eyes. And he smiles.  
  
  
“You’re young,” he says kindly, clearly not believing her, and even that’s okay in this moment, because Polina knows she has the rest of their lives to convince him.  
  
  
She’ll make sure of that.  
  
  
Then each thrust gets a little harder, a little faster, until she’s clinging to Leonard with arms and legs, shamelessly begging him for more. Saying dirty things in pidgin English and telling him he’s her love, her sweetheart, her everything.  
  
  
 _The rest of our lives_ , she thinks as she comes.  
  
  


Talking Heads: Girlfriend Is Better

  
  
Word slowly gets around that the CMO and the ensign are sleeping with each other, and neither of them do anything to squelch the rumors.  
  
  
Indeed, Polina walks around with her head held high. Trades in her uniform trousers for a suicidally short skirt, both because Leonard likes her legs, and for easier access. A fact she tells Hikaru, only for him to roll his eyes and make his  _eww_  face.  
  
  
Mostly, everyone seems to be some degree of baffled at she and Leonard’s relationship, new though it is. The only one who seems genuinely disapproving is Nurse Chapel, though the day Polina cares what some silly nurse thinks is the day she’ll resign her commission.  
  
  
“Polina . . . you and the doctor have made no secret of the fact that you’re . . . seeing each other. . . .” Chapel begins awkwardly.  
  
  
“What of it?” Polina demands, waiting for M’Benga to hurry up and finish looking over her test results. She and Leonard are having dinner in his quarters tonight and the only reason she finally consented to going for her yearly physical today is because M’Benga threatened to write her up if she didn’t.  
  
  
And now, the man’s in his office, holed up like a taciturn squirrel. No doubt adding drama to a routine physical analysis.  
  
  
In the mean time, Polina’s trapped in the exam cubicle with Nurse Busybody.  
  
  
Chapel tries another tack. “Listen, Polina, the doctor is a fine man—a  _good_  man—but he’s . . . different in ways you don’t understand yet. And there’s the age difference, which is greater than you think—“  
  
  
“My relationship is none of your business,” Polina says coldly, hopping off the biobed. “Please ask the doctor to comm me the results. I have an appointment to keep.”  
  
  
“Polina, I’m not trying to—“  
  
  
But Polina’s already gone, Chapel thoroughly out of her mind as she imagines the night ahead.  
  
  


R.E.M.: Texarkana

  
  
Pacing her cell, Polina rubs her hands together agitatedly, counting the seconds until she’s free, and in Leonard’s arms.  
  
  
It already feels like she’s been the brig for twenty thousand years.  
  
  
“But it was worth it,” she tells herself aloud, pausing to tug on her short hair, a nervous habit developed recently, since she started letting it grow out. For Leonard.  
  
  
“Oh,  _was it_?”  
  
  
Heart suddenly racing, Polina turns to the force-field to see her love, her Leonard watching her, looking grim and displeased.  
  
  
“I would do it all again,” she says firmly, and Leonard shakes his head.  
  
  
“You’re a hothead, and a goddamned idiot, ensign.”  
  
  
Polina smirks. “That is not what you were saying last night.”  
  
  
“Last night you hadn’t attacked a member of this crew!”  
  
  
Blinking her confusion, Polina steps as close to the force-field as she dares. “What she said was unforgivable.”  
  
  
“No, it was stupid and cruel. But there was no call for you to go breakin’ that poor girl’s nose!”  
  
  
Polina huffs, crossing her arms. “That poor girl, as you say, is a jealous twit. And I do not regret what I’ve done.”  
  
  
Leonard walks away. “We’ll see if you feel that way in two weeks.”  
  
  
Rolling her shoulders, Polina pretends to herself that his words, his disapproval—his refusal to stay, and tell her he loves her even more for her dedication to what they have—doesn’t mean a thing to her.  
  
  
She’s never been a good liar.  
  
  
But one thing is for sure: she meant what she said and what she did. No amount of time in the brig will change that. Janice Rand is an envious, nasty little bitch, who’ll certainly think twice before she opens her mouth about Polina’s business again.  
  
  


Live: Selling The Drama

  
  
Polina’s never been religious.  
  
  
Her family, despite its share of geniuses and prodigies, despite mostly being irreligious, is still, in some ways, observant. She can’t count how many times during her childhood she was forced to sit shiv’ah after some relative or other died.  
  
  
It’d always rankled, this play at loyalty to a nonexistent god. She’s never understood the comfort of rituals, or self-sacrifice that one must make to show one’s continuing love and worship.  
  
  
Never understood till now. Till Leonard left her.  
  
  
Oh, he calls it merely a cooling off period, but Polina knows what’s coming as surely as she knows she’ll do everything in her power to prevent it.  
  
  
She’s everywhere Leonard is, doing her best to look alluring and pretty—though she knows with her gawky, almost boyish frame and strong features, that there’s little she can do on that score—doing her best to remind him that he loves her as much as she loves him.  
  
  
She holds herself together even as she falls apart, showing no sign of her pain to the crew or even to Hikaru, who’s taken to watching her like a hawk.  
  
  
But in the deep silence of her quarters, Polina cries and cries, until it feels like she’ll die of it.  
  
  
It's at the very worst moment of their separation, a stolen laser scalpel hovering uncertainly over her thin, recently scarred arm, that she pauses, suddenly calm. The pain she’s been walking around with for weeks seems to be sucked out of her, into a vacuum where she can’t access it.  
  
  
The scalpel drifts wristward, where it hovers once again.  
  
  
Polina has never had a god, never been religious until now. And if sacrifice is what’s required to appease her god, then sacrifice is what she’ll do. She’ll give of herself the only thing she has left anymore, and maybe then he’ll finally believe that what she feels is real.  
  
  
It’s relatively quick and almost painless. Then there’s blood pumping out of her so fast, it’s rather mesmerizing.  
  
  
She lays down, totally at peace with herself, watching blood stain her uniform orange.  
  
  
*Baruch hashem.  
  
  


Natalie Merchant: Wonder

  
  
When she wakes up in Sickbay, clearheaded, she blinks away her foggy vision, and realizes there’s a hand on her own.  
  
  
Leonard's.  
  
  
He’s fallen asleep in a chair by her biobed. He looks exhausted and older than he is.  
  
  
Someone had found her, and she’s willing to bet it was him (though Hikaru, mother-hen that he is, is more likely).  
  
  
Leonard had known, somehow, that she was making a sacrifice and he’d come to save her.  
  
  
Because he loves her.  
  
  
She turns their hands gently to look at her wrist. The only scars that remain are the lighter ones she’d inflicted over the past several weeks. The very last one, the one that had spurted blood like a fountain, that one is completely healed, no sign that it’d ever been.  
  
  
By the time she’s able to tear her eyes away from the unmarred skin, Leonard’s awake and watching her. He looks relieved, angry, and scared.  
  
  
“Don’t you  _ever_  do anything like that again,” he says, sounding like a man choking on his words. Or on something.  
  
  
“Okay,” Polina says, smiling because she’s happy. Because he loves her.  
  
  
Leonard looks like he want to start screaming, but then he sighs, his face falling once more into those lines that make him look old. “Goddamnit, ‘Lina.”  
  
  
“I am sorry. I love you. Do you believe me, now?”  
  
  
“Yes, I do,” Leonard mutters, shaking his head. Then he pulls her hand to his face and kisses it. “I believe you.”  
  
  
Grinning so big, it actually hurts her face, Lina lays back in her pillows and closes her eyes.  
  
  
Her god has been appeased.  
  
  
**Baruch hashem. Elohim tov.  
  
  


Gin Blossoms: Mrs. Rita

  
  
John Grimm paces around the CMO's office, glass of scotch in hand.  
  
  
 _I am sorry. I love you. Do you believe me, now?_  echoes in his brain, as does the kid's ashen face, all serious, big blue eyes and trembling smile. It plays on a loop in his brain, amping his guilt up to levels he hasn't felt since . . . ever, maybe.  
  
  
Polina's been acting strangely buoyant and happy since John put their relationship—whatever it was—on hold. She's been too bubbly and saccharine, too different from the headstrong, occasionally arrogant girl John knew. He's had an uneasy feeling about her emotional well-being for weeks—hell, since the first time Polina cornered him in his office and damn near kissed the lips off his face.  
  
  
If he'd put a stop to it then. . . . if he'd known she was . . . genuinely unbalanced. . . .  
  
  
God, if Lieutenant Sulu hadn't decided to check in on her, hadn't had her door code, she'd be dead, now, thanks to John.  
  
  
As he paces around his office, he can't help but acknowledge that this is all his fault. That he should've just steered clear of her like Sam'd said, but—  
  
  
Shoulda, coulda, woulda, did it.  
  
  
He knocks back the last of the scotch just as the door to his office chimes.  
  
  
"Whoever you are, this'd better be damned good!"  
  
  
The door opens, and it's Sam. Just about the only person he could tolerate seeing, right now. If only because she won't say she told him so.  
  
  
"Damnit, I told you so,  _Dr. McCoy_!"  
  
  
"Well, so much for that theory," John mutters, then sits on his desk heavily. After a few moments glaring, Sam sighs, and comes to sit by him, linking her arm with his and laying her head on his shoulder. "I know this is all my fault, Sam. Believe me, I know."  
  
  
"Actually, it's not," she says finally, sounding every bit as guilty as John feels. "I mean, I tried to warn her not to get too invested in your relationship, but I didn't try very hard. She told me it was none of my business and stormed off. I didn't even try to go after her, or talk her around. I just washed my hands of it. Told myself she'd eventually get over her infatuation with  _Leonard_."  
  
  
"Didn't we all?" John rolls his eyes. "Ah, hell, I shouldn't have gotten tangled up with a girl that young, anyway."  
  
  
"Shoulda, coulda, woulda, did it."  
  
  
"You always know how to make me feel better, Sam."  
  
  
"That's what'm here for . . . so what're you gonna do about Little Miss Fatal Attraction, now?"  
  
  
John sighs again. "I don't know. I can't very well dump her after this."  
  
  
Sam shakes her head exasperatedly. "If you marry this girl, so help me, John Grimm, I'll put you in the ground."  
  
  
"Shut up." Sam laughs a little and John manages a smile of his own.   
  
  
"Well, I guess the most important question is: do you love her?"  
  
  
"I dunno. I don't hate her."  
  
  
"You're a softy, John. You've got mush in your soul."  
  
  
"Ah, I don't know how I feel about her, only that I worry about her, and I wanna protect her. I wanna make things right between us."  
  
  
"How?"  
  
  
John shrugs unhappily. "I'll find a way.  _Without_  resorting to marriage, thank you very much."  
  
  
"We'll see," Sam says, nudging his leg with her own. They sit there for awhile, the Grimm twins, each others' only comfort in the universe. They sit there till it's time to go be Leonard McCoy and Christine Chapel again.  
  
  


They Might Be Giants: Birdhouse In Your Soul

  
  
It's annoying, the way the ship's counselors fuss over her, keeping her from her duties—from almost everyone—until they find out why she tried to kill herself.  
  
  
If she thought it worth saying, she might tell them:  _the purpose of cutting myself wasn't to kill myself, but to prove to Leonard that I would do anything for him. It was nothing so selfish as suicide._  
  
  
She might say that if she thought they could understand, but one look in their kind, bland, passionless faces and she knows she'd be better off explaining herself to the walls of her quarters than to these people. So she refuses to speak to anyone but Hikaru (her best and only true friend), the Keptin (who is very charming and doesn't treat her like she's made of spun sugar), and Leonard.  
  
  
When she's allowed to see them, which isn't regularly.  
  
  
The counselors think they can break her open and see what's inside, then rebuild her in their image. She has no intention of letting them, no matter how long they keep her under lockdown in her quarters. She'll stay herself, the woman Leonard loves, even if it costs her her career and the respect of her peers, which she's fairly certain it has.  
  
  
But it netted her Leonard, so that's okay.  
  
  
Sometimes, when the counselors let Leonard see her (supervised, like all her visits), she simply sits there and basks as he holds her hand and tells her the silly, nothing goings-ons of the ship.  
  
  
No matter how banal the actual words, she knows that what he really means is,  _I love you_ , and that makes seclusion all the more bearable.  
  
  
"Scotty damn near blew up the ship tinkering with the damned warp core."  
  
  
 _You are precious to me, Polina._  
  
  
"Jim nearly got killed trying to help evacuate the Plenniak from their damned rickety space-station."  
  
  
 _I love you more than words can say._  
  
  
"Ensign Taglietta and Yeoman Foster had a noisy break-up in the Mess."  
  
  
 _You are my one and only. I love you._  
  
  
Polina simply basks.  
  
  


Gin Blossoms: Allison Road

  
  
"Don't you miss it, Polina?"  
  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
  
Distracted blue eyes meet Hikaru's, and as always, lately, he finds it hard to believe his best friend tried to kill herself not one month ago. These days, she's always smiling serenly, and spends her copious amounts of free time singing to herself, or playing with her hair. She barely hears anything anyone who isn't McCoy says, and the ship's counselors are starting to get really worried about her.  
  
  
Everyone is.  
  
  
Hikaru sighs and glances at the current counselor on duty, who shrugs limply, and motions him to go on.  
  
  
"Don't you miss being on the Bridge, navigating, and going on away missions?"  
  
  
Polina smiles bemusedly. "A little, I suppose."  
  
  
And there the conversation falls flat.  
  
  
More motioning from the counselor, and Hikaru frowns. "Because we miss you. The Bridge, I mean. Even Spock misses you."  
  
  
"He is a sweet man. Tell him and everyone I said 'hi.'" Dreamy-voiced lack of interest that Hikaru's sick to death of, and sick to death of trying to break through.  
  
  
He's starting to think that even if he did, there'd be nothing left of his best friend to find. . . .  
  
  
Hikaru leaves, shortly after that, fists clenched. Between Polina's room and Sickbay, everyone has the good sense to get out of his way and  _stay there_.  
  
  


The Wallflowers: Three Marlenas

  
  
On the evening that Lieutenant Sulu gets stashed in the Brig for attacking the CMO, John Grimm finally falls into a deep, dreamless sleep, only to be awoken by a hand on his mouth.  
  
  
"Lights at tventy percent," a soft voice says, and he doesn't need lights to know who's in his room, who's in his bed. He sits up and gets hugged to within an inch of his life.  
  
  
"'Lina, baby, what're you doin' here?" he asks when she relaxes her embrace. A quick once over shows that she's naked, even though her face is all made up, almost garrishly. Her light brown hair hangs in loose curls around her bare shoulders.  
  
  
"I need you, Leonard," she says softly, rocking her pelvis against his in a way that says exactly what it is she needs. John's body, trained chimp that it is, starts to respond instinctively.  
  
  
"'Lina, we can't," he says, trying to move her off him without hurting her, but she clings to him with a strength he can't account for. "How'd you even get out of your quarters?"  
  
  
She rolls her eyes, a flash of her old arrogance shining out. He's surprised to have missed it. "Leonard, I can get into and out of any part of the ship I vant. I encrypted most of those locks myself."  
  
  
"But—" then 'Lina's kissing him hard; she tastes like toothpaste and lipgloss. Like the girls he used to date back before he'd ever thought of joining the marines or leaving Earth. And he doesn't know whether it's the nostalgia, or just  _her_ , but he's already starting to get hard.  
  
  
For a few minutes he holds her, lets himself be kissed and ground against. She burns in his arms like a living flame, and he before he knows it, she's snaked him out of his boxers and is astride him, moaning and shaking.  
  
  
"Baby, we can't—you're not well—"  
  
  
"Let me have this, Leonard, please? Just this once, and I vill go back to my qvarters like a good girl." Big blue eyes, close enough to be his whole universe, stare down into his own, even as her muscles clench tight, holding him inside. He does some moaning of his own, and when she kisses his eyelids tenderly, murmuring her love, he rolls them over and pins her hands to the bed.  
  
  
She gazes up at him trustingly, longingly. "I love you," she says, and smiles.  
  
  
"You're so young," John tells her almost angrily, pressing into her hard enough to make her gasp and pull him closer, one slim hand on the back of his neck, the other on his right bicep. "Too young to mess yourself up over me."  
  
  
'Lina kisses him and wraps her legs around his waist, bucking up to meet each thrust until he's gone so deep he's trapped in her.  
  
  
He's not sure he wants to get out.  
  
  


10, 000 Maniacs: Eat For Two

  
  
Several weeks later:  
  
  
"You seem more focused, lately. And your appetite's gotten better," John notes over lunch for two in Lina's quarters.  
  
  
He's been remiss in visiting her lately (since the night she crept into his room), and took the afternoon off just to . . . touch base with her. According to her counselors, she's not as divorced from reality as she had been just a few short weeks ago. She's responding to her visitors well, and even spends some time out of her quarters—usually to walk in the Arboretum or to visit the botany lab, and Lieutenant Sulu.  
  
  
'Lina grins and glances at her current sitter—who's nodding in the corner, and has been for the past half hour—jthen leans in close, her eyes glowing with happy mischief. She's positively radiant. "Want to know a secret?"  
  
  
"Uh . . . sure, kiddo . . . I guess. . . ." John says hesitantly, his stomach churning for no reason he can name, the hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention.  
  
  
'Lina's grin gets even wider, and her eyes are too intense, too intent on John's face. She takes his hand in her cold, narrow one and pulls it to her stomach, linking their fingers. Then she leans even closer to whisper playfully in John's ear, her breath a warm, shiver-causing tickle:  
  
  
"I am eating for two, now."  
  


*

  
  
*Blessed be the name of the Lord.  
**Blessed be the name of the Lord. The Lord is good.


End file.
